Buy Nothing Day? There must be a better way to protest

An activist taking part in Buy Nothing Day in Seoul, South Korea, in 1999. Photograph: AP

Brace yourself, you are about to enter an abusive relationship. It will waste your energy and the planet's resources, leave you feeling sullied and probably in debt. Your partner in this case is the material world; the type of relationship, consumerism; and the date you're going on is the materialistic orgy of Christmas.

Does it have to be this way?

You could abstain: this Saturday is international Buy Nothing Day. Begun in 1992 in Mexico to protest against overconsumption, it has become an annual fixture in the US, where this year, in obligatory fashion, it has been dubbed Occupy Xmas. In Britain, shoppers are exhorted by its organisers to "lock up your wallets and purses, cut up your credit cards and dump the love of your life – shopping".

That will work for some, especially those whose wallets and credit cards are already empty or overextended.

But it leaves two problems. Historically, appealing successfully to abstinence – persuading teenagers not to have sex, for instance – tends to fail, without an equally attractive alternative to offer. Second, one of the few things that most economists agree on is that the economy lacks demand (spending).

So perhaps it's time for a new kind of materialism, based on an economy of better, not more: one that is rich in the good-quality work created by providing useful services, that makes things which last and can be repaired many times before being recycled, allowing us to share better the surplus of stuff we already have. It is emerging now in things ranging from furniture to tools, cars, fridges, clothes and food. "Repair, reduce, re-use, recycle", long a mantra of green economists, could be the basis of a new economic model that performs the neat trick of boosting demand without increasing consumption.

The New Materialism, by Andrew Simms & Ruth Potts, is published on 24 November.